DelayLab
Reviewed by:
UG Team, on september 05, 2013 0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Price paid: $ 229.99

Ease of Use: This is the ultimate delay effect for someone who not only wants a lot of options, but also wants total control over those options. There are 30 types of delay available on the Vox DelayLab including very accurately modeled Vintage delay effects along with some Vox originals. There's also a looper that can capture up to 28 seconds, which can also be used with one of three different delay types. The regular delay effects can go from 1 ms to 4 seconds and can be adjusted in 1 ms increments. There are 30 ready-to-use presets, which you can save over with your own settings. Ten of the presets have delays dialed in for the following songs: "Welcome to the Jungle," "Lateralus," "Cliffs of Dover," "Rope," "Walking on the Moon," "Where the Streets Have No Name," "Run Like Hell," "2112," "Lovers in Japan" and "Give It Away."
Three additional features are: Sync Mode, which allows you to create poly-rhythmic effects; Seamless Program Change, which helps transitions between settings sound natural; and Advanced Bypass function, which uses decay to avoid effects being cut off abruptly when you switch settings. The DelayLab uses 24-bit audio sampling just like top-of-the-line studio gear. On the back panel are a pair of 1/4" inputs, a pair of 1/4" outputs, a jack for the optional AC adapter, and a control pedal jack for real-time parameter control via expression pedals like the Korg EXP-2 or Korg XVP-10. The Vox DelayLab runs on four AA batteries, and seems to have a pretty lengthy battery life. A handy dandy little instruction book helps make all the options make sense. // 9

Sound: To my ears, there is no Digital Delay that sounds quite like true analog, but the Vox DelayLab does a pretty good job of emulating warm, Vintage bucket-brigade analog delays and tape echo effects, complete with sonic irregularities and saturated distortion. On top of that, it can do a couple dozen other things an analog delay is never going to do. I play a wide range of music, from thrash metal and blues to grunge and outlaw country. I was playing a semi-hollow Ibanez Artcore AXD83P with medium output passive humbuckers, and a somewhat hotter Carvin DC145M through a Carvin V3M Combo and a small Orange Crush Series amp. It was easy to find specific delay sounds that I was looking for with this pedal, no matter what genre I happened to be playing. The Looper effects were especially fun to play with, and it doesn't over-ride your amp's tone, which is great. While the 30 presets included are a really great place to jump from, this pedal really starts showing you what it has when you dial in exactly what you want and see how easy and quick it is to save your presets and to call them back up when you need them. I can't think of a single thing this pedal is lacking in the world of delays. // 9

Overall Impression: I almost didn't want to like this pedal because I'm overwhelmingly a fan of analog delay and I'm not a fan or "multi-effects" pedals, but this Digital Delay does a really fair job of emulation of analog on top of all the other wonderful things it does. I've been playing guitar for a long time, but I've taken it seriously for the last 5 years or so and I take my gear seriously. This really is the one-stop product for every delay need you'll ever have, especially if you add in an expression pedal for real-time parameter control. The $229.99 street price is quite reasonable considering the sonic ground this pedal covers. Add in the looping, the presets and being able to call up exactly what you need when you need it and the price starts to look really good. If this were lost or stolen then I would absolutely replace it at my earliest convenience. Bottom line? This pedal won me over.

DelayLab
Reviewed by:
losing battle, on october 09, 2014 0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Ease of Use: The layout of the pedal is really straight forward to me, no endless menus, the ability to fine tune the time down to the millisecond. Sometimes the knobs do different things then that are labeled so it can get a little bit annoying sometimes but it's not smash your head into a wall frustrating. There was a manual but I lost it on the first day, you can go online and get one if you don't have one but you don't really need it. I don't know if there were any firmware updates on mine or not all I really know is that it works. Here are a few things that I wish it could do the ability to add or change the modulation type to some of the delays because some of them seem a little dry. The looper is a little problematic that it sometimes does not delete the loops when I make them and there isn't a indicator to show how much time you have left but I can't think of a looper that does that anyway. // 6

Sound: I got this thing because I wanted something that I can use as tap tempo delay and it was relatively cheap and it does that and much more. Interestingly enough I never use it as a simple delay. I am using it with a Gibson LP an Ampeg V50h and a buttload of other pedals. Is it noisy, depenends on what your using to power the thing to be honest, a one-spot it can get a little noisy. (cant daisy chain it btw) and if I power it by batteries (it takes 6 AA batteries) its much quieter, so I guess the better your power supply the less noise it is going to make. I do notice a little bit of gating and tone suck when this is in the chain so I just add a bit more volume from my fuzz/dist/od to compensate. // 7

Reliability & Durability: I don't see this pedal having any major problems in the near future. The biggest issue I experience is how there is no indicator of when your battery is going to die, so I always have a spare 6 batteries ready to go. They do last about 5 hours because I am using freebies from a hardware store chain when I have the coupons so maybe Duracell's or something better. So with a set of dollar store batteries it should last 5 hours give or take. The switches and jacks seem solid no real complaints here. I am giving it a 5 because I only had it 6 months. // 5

Overall Impression: Let's see I play various types of metal and psychedelic rock so to me its a pretty good match. I am pretty impressed at some of the things this pedal can do. It has eliminated my desire to buy a eq'd Rainbow Machine because I can get that type of sound from it and it does a pretty convincing Echorec and other old tape delays so its actually pretty fun. Although there are a few settings that are useless like the phazer delay and other modes so I say like 12 out of the 30 modes are actually good the rest on the other hand not so much. The looper is ok but the fact I can't turn off the delay while using it is a bit annoying. Lastly if you use a mode that can oscillate you can use the fine tune mode and actually control the pitch if you adjust the time knob. // 8